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danilanglie's review against another edition
3.0
The first big thing I have to say about this book is: why is it a prequel to Eon and Eternity? The text is a lot more concerned with the world of Lamarkia than it is with the Hexamon. Even the end of the book, as everybody starts figuring out who Olmy is, could have been reworked without the idea of people from another world coming to rescue everybody. This could have just as easily been a group of space explorers finding a planet and settling down.
I liked the world of this novel quite a bit, but I wanted to spend more time in it just understanding the Ecos and the way the nature of it all worked. The best chapters were in exploring the strangeness of the land, like on Martha's Island, or when you meet the "queen."
Olmy never really jumped off the page as a particularly distinct character for me, either, which is a bummer because Olmy was my favorite part of the two other books. I understand that one of the large themes here is in finding identity, and how we construct ourselves. But nothing about the Olmy in this book seemed to follow logically into the Olmy from the other books, which take place considerably later. I wanted to feel like I knew something about this character going in, but really he ended up being very little more than an empty vessel.
Also, Bear has a consistent problem with writing women. They're always either exotic and untouchable or mysteriously sexy or, on the rare occasion that they're actually well-developed humans, they are still sexualized by the male leads, who often have some sort of position of power over them (see: Olmy and Shirla in this text, and Lanier and Patricia from Eon).
I had a good time reading this book, honestly. It was a quick read and it kept me constantly on my toes. The ending left things sort of sad and incomplete, but I liked that as well. I'm only giving three stars because I couldn't stop thinking about the text's flaws as I was reading it, which is never a very good sign.
I liked the world of this novel quite a bit, but I wanted to spend more time in it just understanding the Ecos and the way the nature of it all worked. The best chapters were in exploring the strangeness of the land, like on Martha's Island, or when you meet the "queen."
Olmy never really jumped off the page as a particularly distinct character for me, either, which is a bummer because Olmy was my favorite part of the two other books. I understand that one of the large themes here is in finding identity, and how we construct ourselves. But nothing about the Olmy in this book seemed to follow logically into the Olmy from the other books, which take place considerably later. I wanted to feel like I knew something about this character going in, but really he ended up being very little more than an empty vessel.
Also, Bear has a consistent problem with writing women. They're always either exotic and untouchable or mysteriously sexy or, on the rare occasion that they're actually well-developed humans, they are still sexualized by the male leads, who often have some sort of position of power over them (see: Olmy and Shirla in this text, and Lanier and Patricia from Eon).
I had a good time reading this book, honestly. It was a quick read and it kept me constantly on my toes. The ending left things sort of sad and incomplete, but I liked that as well. I'm only giving three stars because I couldn't stop thinking about the text's flaws as I was reading it, which is never a very good sign.
rupl's review against another edition
3.0
I accidentally read this before the others because it was first in the ebook I bought. Although it kinda-sorta spoiled the beginning of Eon, it didn't ruin the story. This really felt like a totally separate book compared to the other two. I enjoyed it and found the alternative biology concepts interesting, but it largely felt like it had nothing to do with Thistledown, or the Way.
mburnamfink's review against another edition
3.0
"The gate will only open somewhere interesting."
Or so I paraphrase the keywarden, as he opens a path from the artificial axis universe stored within the generation ship Thistledown to the planet Lamarckia, and ushers our protagonist, Olmy, on a secret mission to scout a renegade colony of anti-technology utopians. The problem is that the keywarden lies, or at least only partially tells the truth.
Greg Bear's whole thing is a kind of Ultra-Orthodox Hard SciFi, a dazzling display of ideas where the characters and plot take a back seat, and this book delivers. Lamarckia, the centerpiece of the book, is a planet dominated by the ecoi, continental scale organisms that express themselves as scions, sub-organs ranging from tree-analogous to mobile tenders and spies to stranger creatures that influence whole weather systems. The renegade utopians were 5000 colonists under the leader Able Lenk, but his community has fractured politically, and is riven by famine, war, and threatened by the ecoi, which they lack the scientific base to understand.
Olmy's ostensible mission is to find a clavicle, a device which would open a gate back to Thistledown, but instead he arrives in the middle of a war between Lenk and the renegade Brion, and then signs up on a scientific voyage to circumnavigate the world. The book takes on a tinge of Moby Dick, with a captain obsessed with finding a queen of the ecoi, a mythical self-aware center to the landscape. The actual plot wanders, and Olmy is a cipher as a protagonist.
I read this book because it came first in my Eon collection, which probably was a mistake. I'm looking forward to Thistledown as a setting.
Or so I paraphrase the keywarden, as he opens a path from the artificial axis universe stored within the generation ship Thistledown to the planet Lamarckia, and ushers our protagonist, Olmy, on a secret mission to scout a renegade colony of anti-technology utopians. The problem is that the keywarden lies, or at least only partially tells the truth.
Greg Bear's whole thing is a kind of Ultra-Orthodox Hard SciFi, a dazzling display of ideas where the characters and plot take a back seat, and this book delivers. Lamarckia, the centerpiece of the book, is a planet dominated by the ecoi, continental scale organisms that express themselves as scions, sub-organs ranging from tree-analogous to mobile tenders and spies to stranger creatures that influence whole weather systems. The renegade utopians were 5000 colonists under the leader Able Lenk, but his community has fractured politically, and is riven by famine, war, and threatened by the ecoi, which they lack the scientific base to understand.
Olmy's ostensible mission is to find a clavicle, a device which would open a gate back to Thistledown, but instead he arrives in the middle of a war between Lenk and the renegade Brion, and then signs up on a scientific voyage to circumnavigate the world. The book takes on a tinge of Moby Dick, with a captain obsessed with finding a queen of the ecoi, a mythical self-aware center to the landscape. The actual plot wanders, and Olmy is a cipher as a protagonist.
I read this book because it came first in my Eon collection, which probably was a mistake. I'm looking forward to Thistledown as a setting.
seamyst's review
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
bookworm2021's review against another edition
1.0
It was as if this story was written by a less experienced author. It was a poor attempt to tie what was essentially a collection of fantastic and overly described inhabitants of a fantasy environment into an existing series. If the inhabitants had been the precursors to the Jarts, it may have made more sense. Huge disappointment after the first two novels of The Way.
peterhilton's review
3.0
Not bad, but disappointing sequel to great start. Too much biology-sci-fi for my taste, and takes too long for not enough to happen.
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